2026 Maybes, Uh-Ohs, Unknowns, Can’t-Trust-Ems
In addition to last night’s posting of HE’s 20 most anticipated films of 2026, here’s a rundown of 24 more…four that seem extra-interesting (Ben Affleck‘s Animals, Danny Boyle‘s Ink, David O. Russell‘s Madden, Laszlo Nemes‘ Moulin) plus 20 randomly chosen films that feel like vague problems or slight disappointments but what do I actually know? Not much or nothing.
Between last night’s 2026 post and today’s, we’re talking 44 films. I’m sure I’m overlooking quite a few that deserve attention and respect.
Possible Standout Exceptions: (a) Ink (d: Danny Boyle) — Guy Pearce as Rupert Murdoch back in the old days, based on a James Graham stage play….yes!; (b) David O. Russell‘s Madden, biopic of football coach and commentator John Madden w/ Nic Cage, John Mulane, Kathryn Hahn, Sienna Miller; (c) Ben Affleck‘s Animals, political crime thriller costarring Affleck, Gillian Anderson, Kerry Washington, Steven Yeun; (d) Laszlo Nemes‘ Moulin, French resistance WWII drama w/ Gilles Lellouche, Lars Eidinger, Félix Lefebvre.
Wuthering Heights (d: Emerald Fennell)…Bronte, dampness, erections.
The Bride (d: Maggie Gyllenhaal) — Seemingly extreme (grotesque?) feminist vengeance flick.
Out Of this World (d: Albert Serra) — “An American delegation travels to Russia in the midst of the Ukrainian war to try to find a solution to an economic dispute linked to sanctions”…nope.
The Long Winter (d: Andrew Haigh). Follow-up to Haigh’s All Of Us Strangers.
Bucking Fastard (d: Werner Herzog) — “Twin sisters Jean and Joan Holbrooke, in search of an imaginary land where true love is possible, start digging a tunnel through a mountain range”…nope.
The Dog Stars (d: Ridley Scott) — Another dystopian wasteland flick? No thanks.
Flowervale Street (d: David Robert Mitchell)
Ghostwriter (d: JJ Abrams) — Glen Powell, Jenna Ortega, Emma Mackey, Samuel L. Jackson.
October (d: Jeremy Saulnier)…horror-thriller…nope.
Project Hail Mary (d: Phil Lord & Chris Miller)….not a chance.
Narnia: Tne Magician’s Nephew (d: Greta Gerwig)…sorry, nope.
The Uprising (d: Paul Greengrass) — Braveheart 2?…14th Century action-battle flick w/ Andrew Garfield, Thomasin McKenzie, Katherine Waterston…thanks but no thanks.
Butterfly Jam (D: Kantemir Balagov)…Barry “beestung nose” Keoghan, Riley Keough…maybe. Balagov is a first-rate director.
The Beloved (d: Rodrigo Sorogoyen) — Javier Bardem, Victoria Luengo..estranged father-daughter drama.
Alpha Gang (d: Zellner Brothers)
Alone at Dawn (d: Ron Howard)…bravery & self-sacrifice in Afghanistan. Adam Driver, Anne Hathaway, Betty Gilpin.
The Invite (d: Olivia Wilde).
How to Rob A Bank (d: David Leitch)
A Colt is My Passport (d: Gareth Evans)
I Want Your Sex (d: Gregg Araki)
20 Likeliest 2026 Keepers
The common consensus is that 2025 has been a fairly weak year. It seems safe to say, however, that 2026 will be a much stronger one, at least by intuitive HE gut criteria. At least 20 qualitative humdingers, by my count, and an impressive roster of grade-A directors (Inarritu, Fincher, Guadagnino, Spielberg, Nolan, Mungiu, Farhadi, Sorkin, Gilroy, Farhadi, et. al.).
Two days ago World of Reel‘s Jordan Ruimy posted a list of 70something 2026 films that struck him as noteworthy at the very least, and in some cases high expectation-level.
In this post I’ve pruned the list down to 20 safe bets — i.e., presumptions of quality based upon esteemed critical regard and/or aspirational histories. Most of these represent my idea of festival toppers or possible award-worthy titles, or both.
1. Untitled Black Comedy a.k.a Judy (d: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, p: Tom Cruise)
2. The Adventures of Cliff Booth (d: David Fincher)
3. The Oydssey (d: Christopher Nolan)
4. Untitled UFO Movie (d: Steven Spielberg)
5. Artificial (d: Luca Guadagnino)
6. Wild Horse Nine (d: Martin McDonagh)
7. Jack of Spades (d: Joel Coen)
8. The Entertainment System is Down (d: Ruben Ostlund)
9. Fjord (d: Cristian Mungiu w/ Renate Reinsve, Sebastian Stan)
10. Parallel Tales (d: Asghar Farhadi)
11. Minotaur (d: Andrey Zvyagintsev)
12. Coward (d: Lukas Dhont)
13. The Way of the Wind (d: Terrence Malick)
14. Resident Evil (d: Zach Cregger)
15. 1949 (d: Pawel Pawlikowski)
16. The Basics of Philosophy (d: Paul Schrader)
17. Switzerland (d: Anton Corbijn)
18. Michael (d: Antoine Fuqua)
19. The Social Reckoning (d: Aaron Sorkin)
20. Behemoth! (d: Tony Gilroy)
Yeah, I know…all dudes and “where are the 2026 films directed and written by women?” Anger, anguish and male-hate separatism by way of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Sorry Baby and The Chronology of Water have a place on our communal cultural serving tray.
There are many other high-intrigue titles or potential commercial hits due to open next year. I’ll try to assemble a respectable list of promising maybes and/or second-tier titles later today.
We all understand that Joe and Jane Popcorn are either totally unaware of or only slightly interested in award season favorites. The Oscar telecast heyday has long been over. Best Picture Oscar cred went out the window after Hollywood began woking itself into cultural irrelevance in 2018 or ’19 and especially after EEAAO cleaned up in early ’23.
Nonetheless it can be safely assumed that next year’s Best Picture noms will include the Inarritu-Cruise, The Social Reckoning, The Odyssey, The Adventures of Cliff Booth, Spielberg’s UFO flick and Fuqua’s Michael Jackson biopic…these six at least.
Way Back In 2011…
Herewith is a no-big-deal marking of the 14th anniversary of a classic HE Larry David food–court story.
Barack Obama’s first term was nearly 75% served. It was fairly late on a Sunday afternoon, and for some curious reason I chose this moment to stand upon — defend — a fundamental principle.
How quaint that I mentioned that a seat could be saved with a newspaper.
Imagine That You’re General Dwight D. Eisenhower
And the task of somehow marshalling, organizing and leading a successful “Stop One Battle After Another” campaign — the Oscar-season equivalent of a June 1944 D-Day invasion — has become your responsibility.
A tall order, a steep uphill slog, and — be honest — almost sure to fail. But if you don’t man up and rise to this herculean challenge, the next three months will be a Bataan death march.
So you have no choice, Ike. The burden may break you, but you must become Fidel Castro in 1958 Cuba. Convince the citizenry that celebrating a leftist POC girlboss agitprop fable about a stoner stepdad trying to rescue his Zoomer stepdaughter from the clutches of her deranged biological beau pere boner pants will be against their economic interests. Warner Bros. has already eaten the bitter herbs. Let it end there.
Raise high the roof beam, carpenters! Persuade your flock that it has to be the last 25 minutes of Hamnet or the entirety of the obviously superior Sentimental Value. Save yourselves!
Painful as it may be, split your soul into two halves and become Ralph Meeker and Timothy Carey in Act Three of Paths of Glory. Meeker: “See that cockroach? Tomorrow I’ll be dead and it’ll be alive, and will therefore have more contact with my wife and child than I will.” Without a moment’s hesitation Carey squashes the bug with his right fist, and replies sardonically and sotto-voiced “now you’ve got the edge on him.”
Is it possible to flatten OBAA with the same take-it-or-leave-it decisiveness? Probably not, but as Richard Kiley’s Don Quixote once sang…
Re-Watched “Kelly” Doesn’t Fare As Well
I’m still down with the final 25 or 30 minutes of Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly (Netflix, now streaming) but several first- and second-act scenes didn’t land like they did in Venice (for me at least), and certain portions felt arch, forced, artificial.
I don’t know why it felt less effective this time, but it did.
Variety to “Actors on Actors” Guests: Could You Please Stop Pledging Undying Love To Each Other?
We all understand that you guys respect and admire each other and that certain performances you’ve both given are regarded as serious bell-ringers. But these “Actors on Actors” sessions all feel and sound the same, and it would be wonderful if you could somehow…it’s hard to say this in just the right way, but if you could somehow ease up on the damp fondling and caressing and the smooth talk…if you could back away from giving each other constant pecks on the cheek?
Daniel Petrie’s “Lifeguard” (’76) Finally Doesn’t Satisfy
For some reason I’ve decided to re-watch Daniel Petrie and Ron Koslow‘s Lifeguard, which I haven’t seen since the Gerald Ford-Jimmy Carter era…half a century ago!
I love character-driven ’70s films, but this one doesn’t quite get there. It’s fairly compelling or at least interesting in terms of general character tension and low-key social realism (you can really feel the festering ’70s atmosphere), but it leaves you hanging at the end with the slender, dark-haired, good looking protagonist (played by 31 year-old Sam Elliott, who’s currently white-haired and handlebar-stache’d and who sounds like a droopy Deputy Dawg) at some kind of head-scratching, nowhere-man crossroads.
Good character-driven movies have to end with a sense of justice or finality or symmetrical balance…the main characters have to face reality and deal with their decisions in some kind of “okay, you called the shots and now you’re stuck with this” way. Actions have consequences, bruh.
South Bay lifeguard Rick Carlson (Elliott) loves his satisfying beach gig (which allows him to feel like a kind of king mixed with a judicious sheriff) but is bothered by family-and-friendo judgments that he should be manning up professionally and basically making more money and driving a snazzier car.
Rick would kinda like to get married to foxy ex-girlfriend Anne Archer (28 during filming) and vice versa, but she wants him to make more dough and so would he, but “fatten your bank account” isn’t who he is deep down. He tries selling Porsches at a Valley dealership but he hates the routine and quits. He’s reluctant to have sex with the teenaged Kathleen Quinlan (actually 21 during filming) because she’s too young, but he does her anyway. Once, I mean.
So what’s Rick going to do to resolve his situation? Answer: Not much or nothing very different. He’s basically just heading back to the beach. Which leaves you with a feeling of “that’s it?,…aahhh, fuck me.”
That said, Elliott, Quinlan, Archer, Stephen Young (Porsche guy) and Parker Stevenson (a rookie being trained by Elliott) deliver just-right performances. Even with the weak ending and all, Lifeguard is/was Elliott’s best film ever.
It’s Okay To Not “Like” Certain People
What do you do if you don’t care for older people to whom you’re vaguely “related”, and with whom you’ve been invited to share Christmas dinner with? The conventional answer is “grim up and suffer thorough it.” But maybe not, I’m thinking. Plus I’ve always sensed that they don’t care for my company either…fine. It’s almost a relief.
They’re ”nice” people, considerate, unfailingly polite, etc. But also a bit dull, sedate, incurious, not very well travelled and certainly not my idea of attuned to the here-and-now. I find them sleepily oppressive, and I really don’t want that vibe in my head. So I’m politely stepping back from Christmas Day dinner…no offense, not the end of the world.
What’s the problem exactly? A feeling of novocained numbness when they’re in a room. A minimum of verbal out-reach. A general lack of eye contact. A lack of laughter, wit, audacity. A basic lack of interest and inquisitiveness and opinions. I’d much rather hang out with neurotic actors or alcoholics or gambling junkies or Satanists, even, than fuddy-duds and flatliners.
In my mid teens my mother once confided that her mother Dorothy (my maternal grandmother) had made it clear on one or two occasions that she didn’t care for my father’s father (my paternal granddad). Family relations lean this way from time to time. We just have to roll with the fact that certain people are anathema to each other.